Let the Cold In part 1
by Wavering Constant
Summary: Come listen children, I'll tell you a story, Of a brave lonely boy, And his lost allegory… Jack's early days. Updated Daily(ish)!
1. Chill

(Day 1)

Darkness…that's the first thing I remember…

~*1*~

Chill

(Day 3)

"It's cold…" Lucy gasped pitifully.

Jack didn't understand.

The child quaked like a leaf in the breeze, her locks sprinkled delicately with his frost.

"What's wrong?" He asked, although she couldn't hear him, swirling anxiously around her on the wind.

"It'll be okay, Luce." Her older sister comforted, pulling the small girl's mitten in her gloved hand gently. "We're almost home."

"But weren't you going to stay?" Jack's plead echoed invisibly, the temperature dropping as the spirit grew upset.

The wind turned biting. Lucy to mewled in discomfort.

"Damn this cold!" Emilia spat, clutching her younger sister tighter and jogging towards their cabin.

Jack recoiled. The pair reached the cabin they had left not five minutes ago and rushed inside. Determined to understand why, the winter spirit followed them. Jack winced at the sudden wave of hot air roiling over him.

Emilia shuddered as a blast of cold air followed them into the cabin, and their mother rushed in surprise to the frostbitten pair.

"Emilia, what happened? You've been gone only a moment!" Mary exclaimed, quickly gathering up her poor shivering Lucy and taking the girl to the fireplace.

"I don't know! Lucy just- just- frosted over suddenly."

"It must be colder out there than I thought." Mary murmured worriedly, rubbing Lucy quickly as her daughter pressed closer to the fire.

Jack watched guiltily from the rafters, realizing that whatever was wrong happened because of him. Apparently one couldn't frost over a person the same way one frosted over a tree or a window; he didn't realize people were so feverishly hot until he touched the girl… he didn't know they _needed_ to stay at that temperature…

Lucy's shaking began to ease, and Mary sighed in relief. Jack noticed the girl's skin slowly change from his pale hue to a… warmer shade. With her daughters safely recovering, their relieved but shaken mother began to scold them.

"If it's too cold outside you should both come back to the cabin immediately. Emilia!" The older sister flinched as Mary continued, "Your sister could very well have caught her death out there, young lady! You both are staying indoors until March! Understand?"

"March?!" Emilia cried in horror, "But it's the end of December!"

Jack watched in silence. He would have been pale if his skin wasn't already pallid white. _Caught her death?_ To the winter spirit, cold never became biting or numbing. Even at fifty below, or seventy, the air didn't freeze him. How could something be uncomfortably cold? He hadn't meant to hurt the girl, the frost just looked so pretty on her small form… She could have died. Jack shuddered, and stared at his own frost, its delicate pattern adorning every inch of his pale flesh and clothing.

Suddenly, the trio jumped and Mary rushed to shut the front door as a gust of icy air opened it.

The Jack flew up on the wind, a turbulent flurry of snow spinning around him. The spirit had hoped he was like all the people around him. Despite everything he could do, and how no one could see him, he might at least be normal, somehow. Now he doubted he was remotely human to begin with.

Quick Explanation of Title- Around Chapter 4 this puppy is going to take a nose dive into a completely different plotline, so I figured Hey! Let's split it apart in case you, dear reader, are only interested in the subject of whatever a nonexistent amnesiatic boy with icy superpowers does after waking up in the middle of nowhere.

At least the moon told him his name. And nothing else. Good going, moon. This is what happens when you don't explain the basics.

Comments/Criticism/Suggestions valued!


	2. Corpse

~*2*~

Corpse

(Month 5)

Five months later, and here I've finally found a kindred soul. I think I've known the truth for awhile now, about what I was, and chose to deny it as long as possible. At least I am remotely human.

Mr. Barnelby, as I've dubbed him, is lying on the shore, where I pulled him out.

He's dead.

His pale skin and blue lips shimmer with frost and ice in the cold moonlight. He looks just like me.

Well, wait. Not identical or anything. Barnelby has to be around thirty and is, sorry Barnelby, rather chubby for some poor man who froze and/or drowned in a river. I stifle an insane urge to laugh. I've finally found someone who shares my skin temperature perfectly. But he's not very talkative-

I choke as a wave of repulsion suddenly erases the hilarity in my situation and I stumble off the icy riverbed, feeling sick. I'm dead. Dead as a doornail and probably frozen in the murky depths of that pond I woke up in, no better off than the corpse I pulled out of the water.

What else would I be? Nonexistent and floating on the wind like a snowflake? I am Jack Frost, lost soul of the cold, with the chill of death at my fingertips.

Dead. I'm dead. The words repeat over and over again but they hold no meaning for me. Probably because I can't remember being alive.

Well, this should hopefully be about as morbid as it's going to get.


	3. Crack

Excerpt_- Here in the clearing I'm most at home. This place is always familiar, but I'm pretty sure that's not because of some deeper knowledge. The first place I remember, the spot where I was born in a sense, is here. Of course it's familiar._

~*3*~

**Crack**

(Month 6)

I went back to my pond one evening, mainly to sulk for awhile. It was still a good month before winter there, but I couldn't care less. The town a couple miles away would have to deal with snow early this year; I needed to find something.

Hunched over and balancing effortlessly on my staff in the center of the pool, I stare at the ice underneath me. Over a few hours frost slowly branches out from where my staff touches the frozen water, adorning the surface with a sprinkling of icy lace. It would all look very supernatural and beautiful, if anyone could see me. Below the ice lies nothing but cold, black water. It's like an abyss, lightless and empty. Holding nothing for me.

Regardless I stared down at the murky water, still as a stone statue. Sometime after midnight my feet became too sore from digging into my crooked staff to remain perched. An exasperated groan grated from me as I hopped off and turned away from the ice below me. What was I even doing? Trying to dredge up answers, or see if my body was still under the water? Noticing moonlight on the ice I glared up at the waning crescent in resentment, feeling abandoned. I was about to demand an explanation, but for a moment I couldn't even think of what to say.

"_Why?_" I finally asked, deciding to just bottle up all the raw emotion in my head and force it into one blunt word. The night was quiet, but I could almost **feel** him listening.

"Why can't I exist?"

Depressing, depressing, depressing...

The next chapter should brighten up a bit... before going in a completely different direction.


	4. Shadow

_I gave up screaming at the silent night sky several months ago._

~*4*~

Shadow

(Year 2)

Snow was falling gently over Lindenstown. To the adults, the unexpected white scenery was admired and forgotten in their ever busy week day, but to the children…

"Michael Silver, you shall be defeated!"

Snowballs flew, crashing about their battlefield as small bundles of scarves and mittens dashed about, kicking up the white powder. A brave soul hurled itself to the side, dodging a white missile flying from the recently erected .

"You won't take me alive, savage head!" Michael cackled in all of his ten-year-old glory, throwing more pre-made snowballs from his mound of white at the unruly subjects of the Michael-inean Empire.

Sarah scrambled to her feet with a yell, and re-joined with Louis and David. How Michael had managed to transform from his timid self into a self-proclaimed ice king was beyond them, but at the moment the game kept them too preoccupied to question such matters. Suddenly, a chilly ball of frost materialized, before bursting apart on the back of Sarah's head. The girl spun around to see her baffled blonde companion blink in surprise.

"Louis, you traitor!"

The game rapidly turned into a free-for-all, snow and laughter flying about haphazardly, until the children ended up collapsing in the snow, panting as the sunlight slowly faded.

Eventually, Sarah half turned, half rolled to face the timid boy-turned-tyrant. "What got into you?"

"That's what you get for hitting me with a snowball." Michael replied smugly.

"Louis was the one who did that." She deadpanned.

The accused boy sat up. "No I didn't."

"Well I didn't." Sarah replied defensively.

The other children looked to David, who blinked.

"I was in front of you, Michael."

"Oh, right."

"I did it." A voice said silently.

"Then which one of you hit me with a snowball? I think it was you, Sarah."

"I did not!"

"It was me!" The voice went unheard.

"Well _I_ didn't throw it." Louis chimed in.

"I said, I THREW THE SNOWBALL!" Jack yelled into Michael's ear. The boy didn't even blink.

The winter spirit sighed. The disregard wasn't a surprise, screaming in people's ears hadn't worked the other hundred times, either.

The kids pinned the blame on Sarah, despite her protests, and parted ways, heading homeward before the sunset. Jack figured he might as well do the same.

A quick hop into the air later and the wind was carrying him northward, back towards the icy streets of Burgess.

The sun was setting by the time he arrived, painting the winter sky with warm hues of pink and orange. Jack let his dampened spirits lift as the snow covering the ground sparkled in golden light.

Alighting on a rooftop, the wintery ghost jumped down into the streets, nothing but a cold wind to the inhabitants returning home, and absentmindedly painted a few windows with swirling frost. While the town began to darken and the sun's rays disappeared over rooftops, he stopped by a familiar window.

The Smiths were having one of their reading nights. On the other side of the weathered glass, a mother and her four children were clumped together by a fire as Mr. Smith read a scraggly book adorned with reindeer and snowmen.

Outside in the cold, Jack couldn't hear or see what the man was reading. It was just… bittersweet and warming to watch, like snow sparkling in a sunset.

Inevitably the Smiths retired, with their children half asleep and swaying up to bed. Jack stayed to watch the parents tuck all four in to sleep before departing into the darkness, leaving the windows coated in a fine layer of frost.

The snow's quiet silence surrounded the pale boy as he made his way slowly from Burgess and into the surrounding woods. Feeling a familiar hollow resignation, Jack Frost knocked his crooked staff against the skeletal trees as he passed, leaving painted designs of snowflakes in his wake, until his feet ached and the woods surrounding Burgess were completely covered in his sparkling patterns. Jack finally slumped down into a tree and stared forlornly into space with a sigh. The night would still last for several hours, and it would be several more before any children would wake and play in the snow. The wind came to whisper around the spirit, asking to carry him across the moonlit winter sky, but he waved it off. Jack wanted to keep the buffer of branches between himself and the uncaring moonlight.

Absentmindedly, he began shaping images in the air from quietly falling snowflakes. As time wore onwards Jack blankly stared as his frost bunny twisted into a fish, then swam about before becoming a bird, then back to a rabbit…

Ice shivered in the air. He looked up, the frost bunny vanishing, to realize the wind was gone. As was the moon.

The boy felt a tremor in the night, suddenly aware of a presence just out of sight, watching him. Jack flew to his feet, lightly grazing the ground, his staff shimmering in his hand, landing light as a snowflake in the center of the clearing. In the absence of moonlight the night's shadows had swallowed up the world outside the small clearing. He couldn't find what lay in the murky darkness between his frost covered trees.

Then, right before the spirit something materialized from the dark, its amber eyes glittering unnaturally. Jack almost balked, for a moment convinced it was a wolf, until the looming form of a man stepped casually into the clearing, looking straight at him.

"That's an interesting gift you have."

The man was tall, his skin a deathly shade of grey merging with the absolute blackness of his clothing and hair. He was a stranger, someone Jack knew he wouldn't want to meet in a dark alleyway or- alone in the woods…

Part of him wanted to run, he could sense the uneasy wind just outside the clearing's shadows, murmuring warnings and calling silently above the tree line for him to _come_, and _leave_. Jack shifted lightly on the snow, yet found himself drawn to stay. The man was _looking_ at him.

"Are you a ghost too?"

"What?" The stranger stared at him, and burst into incredulous laughter. Jack bristled, stung.

"You're not dead?" He asked warily.

"Hardly." The man draped in shadows chuckled, before adding with a disturbing grin, "Though you might wish my destruction, depending on your dispositions to fear."

"Excuse me?" Jack wavered, the desire to escape from the foreboding presence wearing on his amazement of having company. "Wh-what are you?"

Sensing the boy's close proximity to flight, the man's smile vanished to be replaced with a more amused expression. "Someone like you, of course. And definitely not a ghost."

The winter spirit was plainly thrown into confusion.

"We're creatures of a different nature, child." The man continued, eyes glittering with annoyance, "Surely the moon told you?"

Jack started at the mention of the moon, averting his gaze as something squirmed unpleasantly in his gut.

"The moon told me my name." His voice sounded odd to him, laced with an unfamiliar emotion.

The shadow clad form seemed intrigued by his tone.

"And what would that be?" The stranger inquired, his tone compelling the spirit to answer.

"Jack"

"Just Jack?"

"Jack Frost."

"Splendid. Do you live here?" The stranger's smile widened, making the boy shift uncomfortably.

"I don't live anywhere." Jack murmured, taking a tentative step backward, "I've been following the wind. Nobody can see me and I don't know why. Do you?"

The stranger was suddenly caught by the boy's eyes, a pair of twin sapphires, as they anxiously bored into his own.

"Yes, I can." The shadow-man murmured, "The moon told you nothing?" he added with distaste.

The thing in Jack's gut twisted in harmony with the man's tone.

"No."

"Pity." The man replied quietly, and Jack saw the other's amber eyes sizing him up, and felt that somehow the stranger could feel the emotions beneath his skin. It was not a comforting thought.

"Well then, Jack Frost," The stranger straightened, seeming to grow even taller, "The night wears thin, and I have places to be. If you come with me, I suppose I can postpone my other engagements to explain your unfortunate situation. Otherwise I'm afraid I must be going."

A hand was outstretched, and Jack looked warily at the tall black form that sent shivers of unease rattling through his blood. He hesitated only a moment, before taking the other's offered palm, and the pair vanished from the world in a flicker of shadows.

Sorry this took so llong to write~ it's much longer than the other chapters in my defense. Betcha didn't think this would ever get done, huh?

Well, as I explained in ch1, this ends part one of Let the Cold In, because I'm assuming not everyone has to be interested in what Jack would have done if Pitch had offered the whole team up thing roughly three hundred years before the rest of the world noticed him. I'm actually writing the second part in bits and pieces, aka not chronologically, so who knows how long that'll take to publish.

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and it may or may not be randomly rewritten if the mood takes me. I've finally gotten this chapter to "legible" "good enough" status, but you know there's always room for improvement! (yay!).

If you have any Questions/Comments/Suggestions, I'm always happy to hear them.


End file.
